Chapter 10: The way home
I have decided to take Maria home, not to her village, but to a place that I realize will always be my home. She has agreed to come with me. I have promised her beauty and solitude but I have also promised her sunlight and music. We have come to compromises. I would have stayed in the dark, but she needs the light, the churches and the fellowship. She admits to wanting to see Paris and I am more than happy to oblige her. Why I am so interested in this woman was huge in the beginning but I have come to realize that I love her. She is what I have been looking for all my life. She is like me and yet she is so very different and she will be the means for my understanding and acceptance. I will give her everything that I can, all that is good about me and within me and she will teach me how to be good in return. I have learned so much from her already and I feel like she will be the turning point in my life. If it isn't that, then at least she has given me a want to live the rest of my days rather then wait idly to die.
We are to return to the Opera Populair but not before I have promised her my dignity and my soul. I will marry this woman and my life will change for the better. Happiness is what we both wanted and we will find it where I have always known it, in my home land, Paris. To think about it now I have been happy before but I have been selfish all my life. It is why I have done all the things that I did in my life. I now feel it ardently and want only to do what I can to make Maria happy. I thought about marriage once, I thought it could only be with Christine. That she was the only person in the world to make me happy but now I see that I was not thinking of her. Maria and I could be happy together, I think, I want to know that she is happy. I want to see her happy. I want to make her life better. I will marry her and we will return to the place of my past. I will seek forgiveness where I can and I will write my music to keep myself and my wife from falling into the poor house.
There are far too many terrors in the world today and Maria has lived through it. War is brewing in our country and all through Europe. I do not know what will happen in the streets of Paris but I believe that I may find solace and protection deep below ground where I have hidden and so I hope that my Maria can understand that I will do my best to keep her safe and shelter her from the dangers that are coming. I want to believe that these conflicts will be over quickly but I doubt that because I have seen the terrors of war and what the human conditions does in times of struggle. Therefore we will travel as quickly as we can manage without being seen and I will take her to the darkness of my labyrinth. We will be safe and happy there and the music will come back to my life. Though the world falls into turmoil I believe that I may finally find the happiness that I have always truly sought.